A WORLD NOT OURS

“Going to Ain el-Helweh was better than going to Disneyland!” Year after year the Danish director, Mahdi Fleifel, has spent his holidays returning to the Palestinian refugee camp where he lived as a child. Here in the south of Lebanon 70,000 people wait for their return to Palestine. While Fleifel can always leave, his friend Abu Eiad is tied to Ain el-Helweh. He doesn’t have a work permit so he passes the time making escape plans. But where do you go in a world that does not belong to you? Accompanied by a Woody Allen-esque soundtrack, Fleifel tells stories from the ghetto and, meanwhile, the film casually puts forward a new perspective on the conflict in the Middle East. The biggest enemy is not Israel but resignation. Anne Thomé 

DOK.horizons is sponsored by